To Sleep
by xXLadyLovelaceXx
Summary: Holmes and Watson must share a bed during a case, but once they get back to Baker Street, they find themselves unable to sleep alone. Fluff. Holmes/Watson.


The first night was awkward, to say the least about it. The bed was clearly not designed for two fully grown men, but the room was small enough that sleeping on the floor was not an option. Watson wouldn't entertain the suggestion anyway, happier being poked by too-sharp elbows and knees than for Holmes to catch a chill sleeping on the cold floor. A night of interrupted sleep was better than nursing Holmes through a cold, after all.

Of course, if this continued all week, he may be tempted to kick the other man to the floor anyway, and damn the consequences. This would certainly be the end of his accompanying Holmes on cases that took them away from home and to the houses of people who did not have a spare bedroom so much as a large closet with a bed in it. He hadn't ever found out why exactly it was necessary to stay _in the house_, anyway, since there had been a perfectly serviceable inn in the village. No doubt Holmes would have his reasons, but if he elbowed him in the ribs one more time, he was for it. Watson gritted his teeth and pressed himself closer to the wall.

The second night was different. Holmes, it turned out, was just as susceptible to running around in the country air as a child might be, and fell into a sleep so deep that Watson was thankful he was close enough to hear him breathing, or he might think he was dead. He was also much more pliable when exhausted, and it was easy enough for Watson to arrange them both so that they could sleep comfortably.

By the end of the week, he was quite used to sharing a bed with the lanky detective, down to the point where he had noticed that every five breaths or so, Holmes would make a little snuffling noise, and he let that slightly uneven rhythm soothe his mind, which was still reeling from the shocking conclusion of the case, and drifted into a comfortable sleep from which he was only awoken once before morning by a swift kick to the shin that was probably not intentional, but met with swift retribution all the same. And if he woke up in the morning with his arms around his friend, well, there was no harm in it.

The problem arose the next night, when, back in his own bedroom at Baker Street, in a bed twice the size of the one he'd been sleeping in all week and sans one eccentric flatmate, he couldn't seem to get comfortable. He huffed and threw himself onto his back, ready to give up and go back down stairs, when there was a soft knock at his door. So used to having no privacy anyway, he simply called "come in," and looked to the doorway to see the familiar silhouette of Sherlock Holmes standing in it. Clutching his ancient but well-loved blanket around his shoulders.

"Watson."

"Holmes, I know it's something of a foreign concept, but some of us like to sleep at night."

"You're not sleeping."

"Very astute, pray tell how you arrived at that startling conclusion."

"I didn't wake you."

_Damn that man and his powers of perception._ "No. No, you didn't. Is there something I can help you with?"

"I can't sleep, either."

"Well if I had a cure for that, I'd take it myself."

"You might have. I think it's because I've gotten used to sleeping with another body in the bed. Now I come in here and find you similarly afflicted, and I wonder if that's not what's affecting both of us."

"What do you suggest, then?" Watson knew, of course, where this was going, but Holmes was damn well going to have to _ask_ for what he wanted for a change.

"Well, if it's not too much trouble, I would be grateful if you allowed me to sleep on your floor."

Watson sighed. He couldn't in good conscience allow Holmes to sleep on the floor, nor could he deny such a simple request from a friend. "No, Holmes. You will sleep in the bed, with me."

He heard what sounded suspiciously like a happy sigh, and wondered if he'd been played. "Thank you, Watson. You are too kind."

The mattress dipped, and Watson felt the detective making himself comfortable in the bed.

"I hope you remember this the next time I ask you for something."

"Good night, Watson."

"Night, Holmes."

Sleep, Watson was slightly embarrassed to note, came easily after that.

For the first few nights afterwards, they continued this ritual of Holmes turning up at Watson's door in the middle of the night so they could both get some sleep. However, Watson was not used to sleeping for only five or six hours, and the only way he could see of remedying this situation was for them to go to bed together. He was surprised at how little resistance the suggestion met from Holmes, but the other man was likely feeling the benefit of restful sleep as well. And so it came to pass that Holmes would appear in Watson's room the moment he was ready to go to bed, and even went up by himself when he wished to retire earlier than the other man and waited for him. And if they woke up tangled together every so often, well, the weather _was_ getting colder after all, and their bodies had obviously craved the extra heat in the night.

This was certainly reasonable, as night-time temperatures were dropping rapidly as the end of the year approached. The cold was making his shoulder and thigh ache terribly, and Watson found that even Holmes' presence was not enough to help him sleep under such circumstances. He had almost given up on the possibility of sleep, and was contenting himself with watch Holmes' back, which was facing towards him, move gently with the soft breaths of repose, when the detective proved himself as perceptive as ever and rolled to face him, bringing his body close enough that Watson would benefit from the warmth, and tucking the extra blanket he always brought with him around both of them.

"Thank you." He whispered into the other man's shoulder.

"Think nothing of it. Tell me," came the sleepy reply, "which is worse, shoulder, or leg?"

Watson took a moment to consider his reply. His shoulder always hurt, but it was the sort of constant dull pain one got used to, and whilst it was worse tonight, it was nothing like the cold ache of his thigh.

"Leg, tonight."

"Hmm." It was little more than a sleepy murmur, and he wondered why Holmes had asked if he didn't intend to do anything with the information. But then a bony knee was thrust between his legs, which were shifted until Holmes' thigh was under the wound in his own. After his initial shock, Watson had to admit that the extra warmth _was_ helping to soothe the hurt.

It seemed both completely appropriate and natural, then, to thank him with a quick kiss to the cheek. The tiny little noise of acknowledgement told Watson that this was perfectly acceptable. He sighed contentedly and soon fell into a peaceful sleep.

They still mentioned nothing of their sleeping arrangements during daylight hours, and Holmes was careful to unmake his bed every morning before breakfast, because as kind and forgiving as their landlady was, she was likely to jump to incorrect conclusions if she found they were sharing a bed.

They continued on without discussion well into the winter, huddling ever closer as the overnight temperature steadily dropped and the windows frosted over every night. Holmes, rail-thin though he was, made an excellent hot-water bottle and a more than acceptable bedmate, now that they'd gotten used to each other. He didn't snore, he didn't toss and turn once he was comfortable, and he didn't steal the blankets. This was incredibly surprising, given his daytime behaviour, but Watson knew that there were two sides to the man.

Watson wondered, later, if perhaps his sharing a bed with Holmes for so long might have had something to do with the increasingly difficult to ignore thoughts he was beginning to have. It was not, he decided, merely that he was sexually attracted to Holmes. That would have manifested itself before now, and whilst he had at one time entertained the notion of greater intimacy with his new flatmate, it had become clear early on that if Holmes did indeed go in for that sort of thing, it wasn't on a casual basis.

He was no longer interested, however, in a casual arrangement of any sort. You did not, Watson was fairly sure, watch fondly as a person with whom you wished to have a casual sexual relationship slept. You were not enamoured of their dishevelled hair in the morning, nor did you have a nearly irresistible urge to pet it softly. You most certainly did not spend time wondering how many times you could make them smile in a day, and then testing your estimates.

No, as far as Watson could tell, he was falling, and falling hard, for his friend. This, he reflected, could constitute a problem, as he had never been an especially good liar and had a bad habit of wearing his heart on his sleeve. And he _still_ couldn't get to sleep without Holmes' presence.

It wasn't his fault. Not entirely, anyway. Holmes should take at least some of the blame, for being so irresistible when he was almost asleep, his usually drawn face just beginning to relax. Watson had waited, tried to forget about his new-found feelings for his friend, but in that moment, when they were both tired, and his defences were down, and he could just feel Holmes' warm breath on his cheek, Watson could not think of any other course of action but kissing him. And so he did.

What he had fully intended to be a chaste, closed-mouth peck on the lips turned almost instantly into more, as Holmes gasped a fraction of a second before their lips touched, and suddenly it was open-mouthed and warm. It only lasted for a moment, but by the end of it Holmes' eyes were wide open and staring, almost alarmed looking.

"I'm sorry, Holmes, I-...mmph."

Watson was silenced by the detective's lips against his again, just sealing their slightly open mouths together. He had a fleeting thought that it might be the sweetest kiss he had ever experienced. Holmes pulled back after a long moment and took in a gulp of air.

"Oh thank God. I thought I was going to have to make the first move, and that would've been an unmitigated disaster." He broke into a gentle smile, and raised his fingers to ghost along Watson's cheekbone, "Watson, I would be much obliged if you'd say something. Any reaction at all would be preferable to silence, really."

The doctor took a moment to gather his thoughts, and one came quite forcefully to the front of his mind. "You knew!"

"Knew what? Oh, knew about your feelings for me, you mean. Of course I did. You talk in your sleep."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I could ask you the same question, _my dear_."

"I..." Well, what was there to say to that?

"Watson, would you mind terribly kissing me again?"

Watson chuckled deeply and threaded his fingers through Holmes' hair before complying. This time, he took charge and thrust his tongue into the other man's mouth, pulling his head back gently to get a better angle.

Holmes sighed happily as the kiss ended, his whole body relaxing once more as though he was almost asleep. On closer examination, it seemed to Watson that he _was_ nearly asleep, and that was not at all the reaction he had expected.

"I know what you're thinking," came the sleepy murmur, "and you are quite incorrect to doubt your prowess. However," he continued forcefully as Watson drew breath to speak, "you underestimate my exhaustion. This is, after all, the closest I've ever come to telling anyone that I love them, and I have found it quite draining. So, in the morning, I would very much like to pick this up – but for now, I would like to sleep."

Watson simply looked on in wonder as the detective curled up against him, and waited for morning to come. 


End file.
